Cyanotype


Art made from light. This photographic printing process was historically used for making blueprints until it was creatively harnessed by Anna Atkins in the 1800s to make photographic copies of plant specimens. When a light sensitive solution is applied to paper and then exposed to the sun, it becomes a magical canvas for the imagination. This creative process involves paper preparation in the dark, foraging for plants and objects in your environment to place on the paper and create a composition, patient waiting while the sun burns the image into the paper, and then a baptism in water where the shadowed spaces become white and the whole image resurrects in a blaze of blue. Cyanotype requires creative collaboration with weather, nature, plants, sunlight, and water to create a work of art. There is something really humbling and holy about that collaborative reality. The effect not only renders dreamy and mysterious imagery, but it invites a serene and attentive presence to the moment and to the land (both within and without) that I inhabit.